Drive Podcast: Episode 1

Not to be confused with Drive Podcast 1

This wiki's page on this comic page is not yet complete!
The following still needs to be done: transcribed until the 15 minute mark. Questions should get time stamps

Transcript

This content is not published under a Creative Commons license! Text and images are used in this wiki only with permission of the author. The content should stay true to the original.
Follow this link to get to the original: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23869981

• [0:00] [intro music]
• [0:10] Fred: Hi everybody, I'm Fred Schroeder, director of the award-winning comics documentary Stripped.
• Dave: And I'm his friend Dave Kellett, cartoonist of the sci-fi comic Drive.
• Fred: And you're listening to the monthly Drive podcast.
• Dave: Which goes out exclusively to Patreon backers at patreon.com/drive and Fred, let's talk some Drive!
• Fred: Let's talk Drive! We got a bunch of Patreon questions this month, so let's see how many we can get through. Are you up for that?
• Dave: I'm excited for this. So this first podcast, by the way, Fred, I'm going to release publicly so people can get a taste for it. But for every podcast from here on after, this is gonna go up exclusively on patreon.com/drive. So, all these questions are from backers and supporters on Patreon and you go ahead and take them in whatever order you would like to.
• Fred: Alright, sounds good. Sounds like some sweet, sweet Patreon exclusives. 'Sclusies, you know-
• Dave: Some 'sclusies!
• Fred: I love 'sclusies.
• Dave: I should mention that Fred and I have been going to Comic Con together for about a decade and we have developed a stupid shorthand for exclusives called 'sclusies. And we sound like ten year-old boys whenever we say the word 'sclusies.
• Fred: 'Sclusies!
• Dave: There's no good way to make us sound like old men when we say the word 'sclusies. Like, "look at these 'sclusies I got".
• Fred: "Ey, back in my day, we used to have 'sclusies..."
• Dave: "I remember when we could get a... I got a Lego kitty once and it was a 'sclusie!" Anyway... So what's the first question, my friend? Shoot me, hit me, whatever people say about that sort of thing.

Question 1

• Fred: Alright, so the first question comes from Damien Paradies, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, and he asked: "Personally, what I'd be most interested in is the percolation moments, where were you, what were you thinking when you had an aha moment about Drive itself? Or specific characters?"
• Dave: Aaah! That's fun. Well, so, I should probably start off with saying that the, and this is weird, that this happened, but the whole cloth idea for Drive came to me at a cartoonist signing at Meltdown Comics. You know where Meltdown Comics is, Fred, in the world?
• Fred: Oh yeah, off Melrose? I think?
• Dave: Off Melrose, yeah
• Fred: Los Angeles
• Dave: Here in Los Angeles, right. So, I was doing a mutliple cartoonist signing with Kazu Kibuishi, with David Mulkey, with Steve Troop and one or two other people, I don't remem- oh, Kris Straub was another one. And you've been to enough Comic Cons, Fred, well, you know that sometimes signings are amazing and they're gang-busters and you're flying busy and it's so much fun. And then, there's other times where no one shows up and you feel like you are two inches tall. And that's what happened at this particular Meltdown Comics signing. And so, as part of it, we were all just kind of signing and sketching for each other, just doodling and talking, while the occasional person walked in. And in that process, I started drawing Drive characters. And the idea for Drive started germinating in that signing and on my car ride home, and as you know, from Meltdown to where I live is about an hour drive, I had the entire story idea for Drive on that drive home. So, it took a couple of years from that point for me to start doing it, I think it was in 2008, 2009, but it started in that Meltdown Comics failed signing in whatever year it was, I don't know what, 2007 or 2006, something like that.
• Fred: Wow, do you remember the first character that you drew?
• Dave: Nosh. It was Nosh.
• Fred: OK.
• Dave: It was Nosh. Who I think was named, I have it in the book, but I think his name originally was Gush or Gish or something like that.
• Fred: Gush!
• Dave: I knew I wanted it to be monosyllabic, but I didn't have it yet and Nosh was perfect for its parallelism in terms of a little nosh of food, you know
• Fred: I'm so glad we got the rewrite from Gush
• Dave: It's a page 1 rewrite, boys! Yeah, no, Gush was not, you know, no one wants to read a character called Gush, that just sounds terrible.
• Fred: No, no, that sounds fantastic
• Dave: That sounds like a very different comic is what that one was
• Fred: So, do you still have that original drawing? Of Gush?
• Dave: I do! I do, actually. It's probably about 10 feet from me right now in my fireproof safe that I keep all my originals in.
• Fred: Wow
• Dave: Not a fireproof safe, fireproof drawer system. It's just a file cabinet to be fireproof
• Fred: It's a walking safe that Dave has that, if you've ever been to his place, it's exactly like Uncle Scrooge's money bin.
• Dave: It's like what Howard Hughes had to keep all of his fingernail clippings and various urine samples, that's what that is
• Fred: Oh yeah. It's delicious. Well, that's very cool! Have you ever showed, have you ever put that up online, that very first Nosh drawing, or Gush, as I like to call him now?
• Dave: Yeah, it's actually at the very back of the book in Act I. You can see the pencil sketches and the first one, and you can see my handwriting where it's like "Gish?", scratched out, "Gush?", scratched out, "Nish", scratched out, and then eventually "Nosh". It's pretty funny. You can literally see the ideation process happening. And then there's been a couple other times in the process with Drive where the ideation got fun. I remember, there was a Baltimore Comic Con about two years after the comic had started and I was talking with Kris Straub of Chainsawsuit and Starslip and we were talking about the ship designs and he was talking about how much he liked the Ring as a unifying design principle for all the ships. Just, over beers, we started talking and a whole big wing of the background of the Continuum got invented that night in that conversation. So I do remember that one. So, I think that kind of gets at what Damien was hoping for, which is where and when were some of the ideas generated.
• Fred: Yeah, it's always interesting where, you know... Because you can have these ideas, but then there's always that, like, breakthrough moment, where it's like, "oh I see how I'm going to complete this or make this turn", you know, and those are really fun creative moments and sort of... I've been with you when you've had those. I think we took that long planeride to France and we were talking Drive for a lot of it, because it was such a long trip.
• Dave: Oh right, we went to the Angoulême comics festival, right?
• Fred: Yes! Which was amazing. But that was a very cool thing to see, is, your mind sort of realised, like, oh wait, no, there's a possibility where I could, you know, explore this character a little bit, or take this story turn, yeah.
• Dave: Right, right. Oh, you know what, I hadn't actually thought about this, as a point to Damien's question, but do you remember at that Angoulême comics festival how there was a Kirby exhibit?
• Fred: Yes! They had a-
• Dave: Do you remember how I started drawing a bunch of Kirby-esque characters that weekend in cafés, you and I both did?
• Fred: Yeah. It was super fun.
• Dave: Yeah, and so, just in terms of how ideas and things get generated, Fred and I drank, you know, as you do in French cafés, we drank 40.000 Espressos. And had a lot of croissants. A lot of croissants. And I remember that the Kirby-esque drawings that I was doing made their way into some Vinn character designs. And no one would probably notice it, aside from me, but I do remember that there was one specific Vinn that came from me trying to draw a Kirby in France after walking through the Kirby exhibit in Angoulême. So that's a fun- I forgot about that.
• Fred: Yeah, that's very cool, very very cool
• Dave: And you and I had that a couple of times where it will spark on some cartoonist, because Fred and I, for 4 years, traveled around and edited the comics documentary Stripped together and so we have a lot of shared memories in comics and anytime something would spark, invariably, that night, in our hotel room, we would be sketching away while we watched some terrible movie on the hotel cable thing. Or, what was the show we used to watch with the...
• Fred: Storage Wars
• Dave: Storage Wars!
• Fred: It's just the worst! I'm so ashamed to admit that.
• Dave: Aw, man. Because we were on the road making a documentary and nothing was on, we just watched Storage Wars. "That's a 100 dollar bill all day long", just the worst...
• Fred: Because we get back to the hotel and they would just play them endlessly. It was a marathon of Storage Wars every night. So you just put it on and it was like, Storage Wars for 2 hours where you completely just turn off your brain and, like, have it on in the background
• Dave: We would just order, like, room service french fries or cheesecake and just sit through, just the worst aspects of human existence. Just like, "I'm watching Storage Wars and eating a cheesecake. I'm just sitting here eating a cheesecake."
• Fred: Ah, Iowa.
• Dave: Well, anyway, what's question number 2 for us?

Question 2

• Fred: OK, question 2 comes from Steve Heelie and he asked "would you like to see Drive expand into other media? Novels, cartoon, live action TV, musical theatre, blockbuster CGI-enhanced movie?"
• Dave: Well, blockbuster... Well, OK, let me back up. I should mention that a lot of people have asked me why I've never pitched Sheldon to Nickelodeon. Sheldon is my other comic strip, it's sort of a family friendly all-ages strip. And I've never pitched it to Nickelodeon or anything like that because I, for whatever reason, I never wanted it to exist in another medium. I just wanted it to be in comics. But the flip side with Drive is that I'm very cognisant that when I get to the final act and it's almost finished, I am absolutely gonna be writing up a treatment to walk around Hollywood and see what I can do with it. So yeah, I absolutely have a desire to pitch this. Now, the question, Fred, and this is kinda fun to talk about, how do you thing it would work best, would it work best as a multi-part Netflix series, would it work best as, you know, a short Amazon or Hulu series, like 15 ark, 15 series ark? Or would it work best as a feature film? What do you think? What angle would you recommend, as a film maker?
• Fred: Now, personally, I think the opportunity of missing out on is big blockbuster broadway musical theatre treatment. I think when people read Drive, they are thinking give this to Julie Taymor, let's see, what she did with the Lion King, let's see what she can do with Drive. Songs, like, imagine the songs you could get. It would be incredible. I think, you know, bring in Tim Rice, maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber...
• Dave: [laughs] Sure
• Fred: ... have them do some songs. And, you know, who did that Spiderman musical?
• Dave: Oh, Spiderman Into the Dark or whatever it was called?
• Fred: Yeah, you want whoever worked on that! You want...
• Dave: That's the goal. Fred, stop digging, you have struck gold, my friend.
• Fred: Imagine a guy in a giant Nosh outfit being thrown around the theatre on strings
• Dave: On a 200 pound metal cage wire. Yeah, exactly
• Fred: Yeah. Oh. You know, magic. I think the kids would love it
• Dave: The kids would eat it up. Well, what's funny was, when you were talking about Julie with the Lion King what I'm imagining is actual humans, but then with a Nosh head floating above their heads, like...
• Fred: Yes!
• Dave: ... the lion in Lion King
• Fred: Yes! She did Spiderman, too!
• Dave: No, she didn't.
• Fred: Yes. So, Spiderman Into the Dark or Turn Off the Dark, I don't know.
• Dave: Or Please Let It Go Dark
• Fred: Yes, Please Let It Go Dark was, Julie Taymor directed it and Bono and the Edge of U2 did the music for it.
• Dave: Oh.
• Fred: Can you imagine? Oh my god. Oh, I kicked myself that I didn't get the opportunity to see that several times on broadway. But I think, you know, I think Drive could be even better
• Dave: Weren't there... I know this is going down a rabbit hole, but weren't there like literally 15 Spidermen because they all kept breaking their legs or breaking their arms in that?
• Fred: Yes! It had like the most injuries of any musical ever
• Dave: Jeez
• Fred: They kept throwing these poor actors into the audience and they'd like, break an arm. It was like ooh
• Dave: "I'm so happy to have my big break!" - "You're gonna be great, kid, get up there." - "And this is safe?" - "It's totally safe."
• Fred: Tonight's Spiderman will be played by...
• Dave: They're understaffed
• Fred: You just kept getting more and more sheets in your program of all the people. Ooh, yeah, Ray, he got hurt at the matinée today, so we brought in...
• Dave: So Suzan, the Mary Jane understudy, will be playing Spiderman today
• Fred: Oh, so good. So, that's what I'd like to see happen to Drive, is a big blockbuster, Tony award winning...
• Dave: Well, OK. You've given me your sarcastic response. But do you think would be the best format to pitch Drive in.
• Fred: I mean, I... At first, I always thought and seen it as a movie, but now that TV shows, you know, I think Game of Thrones has really opened up, like, how big a budget you could have for television
• Dave: Right, right
• Fred: And so, I think it might be a great TV show, because it's such a long story. You know, it really lends itself to the episodic nature of comics, you know? And how you upload it and that pace. So I think that would most, to me, would, you know, if you could have the budget, would be something like a television program. I'm anxious to see what
• Dave: Yeah. I personally think that television is kind of in its golden age for what you can do with that format. And I think a 20+ or 30+ or 40+ episode ark of Drive would be, you know, an hour episode each, would be really fun to do. And I think provided Amazon and Apple and Hulu and Netflix are all still kicking 5 years from now, I think I can sell it. I think it's, I think I can do it. I don't want to be too confident, but I think I could do it. Because I think there are all so desperate for content and I think this one could work. But we'll see. So that's where I would lean to, but I also, you know, in a weird peak of fun, I would also be willing to say like, all right, this could be a video game
• [outro music]

Trivia

• The MP3 file is 37 minutes, 50 seconds long.